The short videos below will help you understand the fundamentals of the importance of fair representation in media, and the in-depth resources explore the complex topics of what good representation means.
The following video follows artist Lubaina Himid explores how picture layouts and editorial choices in mass media affects representation.
Aisha Thomas discusses how representation permeates all parts of culture, from filling in identification forms to the construction of self. She explores this topic through generations of people.
The following books and videos explore representation for Black communities in digital space, music, family, and all spheres of life. The short resources above this list will help you understand the complex topics included. Further resources can be found in the Georgia Tech Library catalog.
Before the innovative work of Zora Neale Hurston, folklorists from the Hampton Institute collected, studied, and wrote about African American folklore. Like Hurston, these folklorists worked within but also beyond the bounds of white mainstream institutions. They often called into question the meaning of the very folklore projects in which they were engaged. Shirley Moddy-Turner analyzes this output, along with the contributions of a disparate group of African American authors and scholars.
Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation by Distributed Blackness places blackness at the very center of internet culture. André Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability to develop nuanced arguments about how "blackness" gets worked out in technological domains.
For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted - relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events. To address this void, they started a blog. Now with an annual readership of nearly one million, their posts foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. In this collection of essays, these self-described as 'critical homegirls' tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny and sexism.
